Tuesday, 7 October 2014

Debunking the idea of the Green Party as the alternative.

(This probably needs some tidying up and to be better written and organised but essentially it's a collections of quotes and facts showing Green Parties have failed to live up to their promises when in power)

Green Parties once in power are always a disappointment.

The problem is not who is in power it's the systems of power themselves. The important point to understand is this: Either politicians have dodgy views to begin with in which case putting them in power will harm the oppressed OR politicians will have reasonably good(ish) views but will because of how the state operates and how the necessities of the market/capitalism will be required to compromise and give in to the dictates of the capitalist class. In either case their cannot be a democratic or green government EVER.

The Scottish Greens.

While not true of all of the greens they do lack an understanding of power structures.

They are the least bad of all parties possibly.

UK Greens.

The Greens in Brighton sold out refusing to back strike bin men.

UK Greens- "The Party has, in my view, begun to move to the right, with a series of significant defeats for the left at the recent party conference, the election or co-option of a number of right wingers to the Executive and the appointment of a number of wanna-be careerists as party spokespeople"

Irish Green Party.

"Many environmental activists, particularly Shell to Sea and Maura Harrington, criticised Ryan for joining Fianna Fáil in coalition as the terms of the programme for government did not include a reversal or renegotiation of the proposed gas pipeline and refinery at Broadhaven Bay, County Mayo.[15][16] Before entering into government, Ryan visibly supported the aims of the Shell to Sea campaign and attended their protests.[17] Ryan was also criticised by Shell to Sea for failing to launch an independent review of the decision, as stipulated by the Green Party in a motion passed at their annual convention in 2007"

"efore their entry into government, the Green Party were vocal supporters of the Shell to Sea movement,[19] the campaign to reroute the M3 motorway away from Tara and (to a lesser extent) the campaign to end United States military use of Shannon airport.[20] Since the Green Party entered government, there were no substantive changes in government policy on these issues, which meant that Eamon Ryan oversaw the Corrib gas project while he was in office. The Green Party made an inquiry into the irregularities surrounding the project (see Corrib gas controversy) a precondition of government at their last annual conference[21] but changed their stance during post-election negotiations with Fianna Fáil."

The German greens renounced their anti-war politics supporting attacks on Yugoslavia, and the invasion of afghanistan

"The German Greens, junior partner in a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), voted to support the deployment of 3900 German troops for the United States-led “war on terrorism” in the German parliament on November 16, 2001 and again at a national Greens conference on November 24–25."

In 2001 they supported the invasion of Afghanistan as part of a coalition government. In Ireland too, the Green Party went from vocal supporters of the ‘Shell to Sea’ movement against the Corrib gas project to actually implementing it. Green minister Eamon Ryan was put in charge of the project, the Greens having dropped their election promises in order to enter a coalition government.

The German Green Party once in office sent riot police against protesters trying to stop nuclear waste being transported through their communities-

"From the mid-1990s onwards, anti-nuclear protests were primarily directed against transports of radioactive waste called "castor" containers. In 1996 there were sit-ins against the second castor consignment bringing nuclear waste from La Hague in France to Gorleben. In 1997 the third castor transport reached Gorleben despite the efforts of several thousand protesters"

"The spectacular decision of the Greens to support German participation in the Nato war against the Serbs over Kosovo was the symbolic climax of this development. "

"Other important milestones have been the Green parliamentary group's distancing of itself from those NGOs and grassroots movements that challenge corporate globalisation, the vanishing of the proposal to reduce working time from Green economic policy, and the abandonment of proposals for political control of ecological transformations in favour of 'economic instruments'. The party has also replaced radical feminist demands with a policy of 'gender mainstreaming' for a minority of career women. Similarly indicative is the compromise the Green Party has made on the slow phasing-out of nuclear energy. This last betrayal led to the breaking away of the anti-nuclear movements from the party. "

"The Green Party as a whole had never really grappled with the contradiction between environmental sustainability and the economic expansionism that is inherent to capitalist accumulation; nor did the majority develop a consistent critique of what was at first a small group of eco-libertarians in their midst, who preached the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’; in favour of free markets and opposed to state intervention, this was initially directed against the ‘big machine’ of industrialism and statism alike."